Overview

Your Aunt Sheila, always something of a local activist, is asking for your help. To the surprise of, well, no one in your family, she announced that she was running for Congress. She’s an underdog in the race, but by only a handful of points. And she’s closing the gap. It’s late July, and you’re just starting to think about returning to campus.

Her request isn’t what you’d expected. Surprisingly, she doesn’t want you to campaign directly for her. Or maybe not so surprisingly, because she’s always been an idealist. She wants you to do something more basic: She simply wants you to get college students to register to vote. “It’s the first step in becoming an adult citizen,” she says. “I don’t care who they vote for. I just want them to vote!” She wants your help developing a simple but powerful text that you can distribute or post when you get to campus in early September.

What will the text say? That’s what she wants you to figure out. She’s not even sure what medium to use. Poster? Web page? Letter to the editor of your campus newspaper? You’ll figure that out once you devise a strategy.

Aunt Sheila’s enthusiasm has always been hard to resist. You agree to help. In fact, you’re even looking forward to the project. She spreads papers out on the table — reports, posters from other voter registration drives, scribbled notes — and opens up her laptop. Together, you start brainstorming ideas. On her computer she calls up a website called “Rock the Vote,” run by a nonpartisan group that offers research and resources for encouraging young people to participate in the election process. “I’ll e-mail you the URL to this and some other sites so you can use them later.”